Piriform’s Recuva finds and recovers files that were deleted from your computer’s hard drive, digital camera memory cards and MP3 players.
Description: Piriform makes some great software (including ccleaner) and I have used it on many computers. I’ve never had anything from Piriform crash, freeze, or act unreliably. Recuva has an interface that is simple to use. All you have to do is use the wizard that first shows up when you open the program.
Compatibility: Windows 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP and XP 64, 2003, Vista 32 and 64
Necessary Info: Here’s how you use it:
- Download and install Recuva on your computer.
- Open the program and at the first screen click “Next”.
- Choose the type of files you want to recover and click “Next”.
- Choose where you want to look for the missing files and click “Next”.
- Click “Next”. It will now start scanning in 2 stages.
- When it has completed the scan, you will be presented with the files that can be recovered.
- Click in the check-box of the files that you want to recover and click “Recover”.
- It will now ask you where you want to recover the file to.You should use another drive to recover the files to because if you write them to the same drive, you could rewrite over some of the files that you want to recover.
- Choose your location and click “Ok”. Recuva will now restore your files to the location that you specified.
To go backwards just a bit… Once you have the list of files, you can sort the files by name, path (the file’s original location), when it was last modified, the file’s size or it’s state (how likely it is to be fully recovered). This last one, the file’s state, is extremely important. You can easily see how likely you are to get your file back. Recuva has 4 “State” listings, Unrecoverable, Very Poor, Poor, and Excellent. If you only want to see the files with an excellent chance of recovey, click on “State” and scroll towards the top.
Here are some of Recuva’s features as listed on filehippo.com.
- Easy to use filter for results based on file name/type
- Simple Windows like interface with List and Tree view
- Can be run from a USB thumb drive
- Restores all types of files, office documents, images, video, music, email, anything.
- Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 , NTFS + EFS file systems
- Restores files from removable media (SmartMedia, Secure Digital, MemoryStick, Digital cameras, Floppy disks, Jaz Disks, Sony Memory Sticks, Compact Flash cards, Smart Media Cards, Secure Digital Cards, etc.)
- Restores files from external ZIP drives , Firewire and USB Hard drives
- It’s fast, tiny and takes seconds to run!
PROs: It recovers your deleted files, is easy to use and does it for free.
CONs: None in my experience.
Rating: 
Recuva: Download free software HERE.
Thanks,
Tim
